had a son, Chao Yung, who is of special interest to us, for he painted a
picture of a Tangut hunter, and Marco Polo has also given a description
of the Tartar horsemen and of the province of Tangut, where he saw and
described the musk deer and the yak.

But we must return to the history of the Polos in China. From time to
time in Marco's book we hear also of his father and uncle, travelling
about the empire, growing rich by trade, and amassing a store of those
jewels, in the value of which they were so skilled, even helping the
Khan to reduce a rebel town, by constructing siege engines for him on
the European model, handy Venetians that they were, who could lay their
hands to anything.[27] Without doubt they were proud of their Marco, who
from an inquisitive lad had grown to so wise and observant a man, and
had risen to so high a position. So for seventeen years the three Polos
abode in the Khan's service in China. The long months slipped by; and at
last they began to feel upon them a longing to see Venice and the
lagoons again, and to hear Mass once more beneath the majestic roof of
St Mark's before they died. Moreover, Kublai Khan was growing old
himself, and the favour which he had always shown to them had excited
some jealousy among his own people, and they feared what might happen
when he died. But the old Khan was adamant to all their prayers; wealth
and honours were theirs for the asking, but he would not let them go.
They might, indeed, have died in China, and we of the West might never
have heard of Marco Polo or of Kublai Khan, but for a mere accident, a
stroke of fate, which gave them their chance. In 1286 Arghun, the Khan
of Persia, lost by death his favourite wife Bolgana, and, according to
her dying wish, he sent ambassadors to the Court of Peking to ask for
another bride from her own Mongol tribe. Their overland route home again
was endangered by a war, and they therefore proposed to return by sea.
Just at that moment, Marco Polo happened to return from a voyage on